Living in the Present Moment
One
Live in the present moment
Jesus tells us, “Do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Jesus wants us to live in the present moment. But that is so hard!
However, when I look back on my life, I see that all the good, all the opportunities, and all the solutions to problems presented themselves as free gifts from God. I received them and responded, but I did not foresee them, create them, or give them to myself.
God and my biological parents gave me life. It was a pure Gift of God providing for me. I was adopted by the most amazing parents, Art and Erla. I did not solve the problem of being an infant without parents. God provided. He picked them out and He gave them to me.
I tried to find the right woman to marry, failed, and quit. Then God sent my wife-to-be, Sandy, out of the blue, with no effort on my part. She is a gift from God. I could not figure out what to do with my life. Then God sent His mother to me. I encountered her and she made it clear I was to go and study theology. I didn’t know what to do with a theology degree. Then Fr. Vince Krische from KU called out of the blue, one more Gift God provided.
I needed a comrade in arms for my mission. God sent Dr Troy Hinkel. We reached our potential at KU and didn’t know what to do next. God sent two entrepreneurial businessmen, Steve Sharpe and John Menghini as well as Archbishop Naumann to show us a new horizon.
We had no means of funding the work. God sent benefactors who became great friends.
We made no strategic plan to begin a Rosary Movement to lead people to Jesus through friendship, good conversation, and the Rosary. But God gave inspiration, we responded, and so did you. It is a free Gift of God Providing for all our needs.
Even those things that were most painful, as I look back, I see that the pain was never wasted. God used it for good.
What is the lesson? If I had lived in the present moment, received everything as a gift as it came then nurtured and grown them in response I could have avoided so much wasted time, energy, frustration, and worry by trying to foresee the future and force my will.
If you look back over your life, you will probably see the same thing, that, just when you weren’t expecting, God provided.
Two
“I’ve suffered a great many misfortunes, most of which never happened.” - Mark Twain
The source of much of my pain and suffering in life has come from my constant living in the future, seeing opportunities yes, but also foreseeing imaginary dangers and trying to protect myself against them, becoming hypervigilant in the effort to control them.
Much pain and anxiety can be avoided by learning to live in the present moment. God is eternal, which means He lives in the Present Moment. If you want to encounter God, then you must learn to live in the present moment. Satan wants to keep us from God. The strategy the devil employs is to keep us living in the future or the past so that we never experience God in the present.
C. S. Lewis writes, “Humans live in time, but God destines them to eternity. He therefore, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which we call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which God has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them.”
God would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the present, either meditating on their eternal union with or separation from God, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.
The devil’s business is to keep us away from the present by making us focus on the future. “In a word, the future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity.” The Screwtape Letters (pp. 75-77).
Three
We can learn to live in the present moment by three steps.
First, look back on your life, and see all the evidence and I mean the solid undeniable evidence, that God brought you through every difficult, unsolvable, fearful, and painful thing safely and he provided for you every step of the way.
That evidence is proof it will be the same in the future because God, who protects and provides, will not change.
In this decade, look back with the help of Our Lady and see the evidence that God took care of you.
Four
Next practice keeping your mind in the present moment.
Think and do the duties that need to be done right now and in a well-ordered and balanced way. Go to bed on time, give God the past and the future so you don’t think about it all night long or wake up at 3 a.m. Get up on time, spend time in prayer, work, exercise, cook meals, eat, talk, read, experience beauty, and learn. Pay attention to and act on inspirations. Live more from inspiration than obligation.
Finally, accept all circumstances and crosses you cannot control as from the hand of God and as the ways he is guiding, providing, and sculpting you.
Five
I will let you look ahead, but not with fear, only with Hope.
The theological virtue of hope is to strive for transforming union with Jesus and heaven as our true happiness and true goal of life.
Christian Hope means a renewed commitment to set our sights on union with God and heaven with the conviction that God will help us get there if we persevere in doing our part. That is the only hope we can bank on because that is the only hope that will never disappoint.
So let’s not get mixed up. Our hope is not for smooth sailing in this life. Our Hope is for our true homeland - Heaven. And God will provide all we need to get there, step by step, by living in the present moment as a pure gift of God providing.